Geo-exploring

There is a considerable amount of published material on the geology of Somerset, whilst almost any walk in Somerset can provide an insight into the varied geology beneath the county and contribute to an understanding of its landscapes.

We include here the popular-interest books, field guides and leaflets that we are aware of, while several museums have displays that provide an introduction to the geology in their area.  For more technical detail and research papers see our Geo-research page.

We hope the resources mentioned below will help to get you started – whatever your type and level of interest might be (whether, for example, it might be taking a walk, planning a group field visit or considering new interpretation). 

Some publications may now be out of print, but still be available second hand and most will be available via a library for example at the Somerset Heritage Centre, if not your local studies library.

The underlying rocks are most obvious on the coast, but there are many glimpses to be found inland: in the sides of sunken lanes, in stream beds and old quarries and pits; in stones within the more recent superficial ‘soft rock’ deposits; and in the stones used in the buildings of our towns, villages, farmsteads and individual churches, houses and barns.

Code of Conduct

If you are planning either an individual walk or a field excursion for a group, please make sure that you:

• • keep to public footpaths and publicly accessible land
  • have up-to-date information on any access arrangements
  • have the permission of the owner for any group field study visits
  • follow the countryside code and geological code of conduct
  • and take full consideration of any health and safety risks, such as tides and unstable rock faces.

The Geological Fieldwork Code of Conduct can be found on the Geologists’ Association website 

Museums

Before exploring in the field, or on a rainy day, you may like to think about visiting one of the several museums in, or adjacent to, Somerset that hold a geological collection. Several of our museums hold examples of rocks, minerals and/or fossils from the county with interpretative information on them.

• The Museum of Somerset – is based in Taunton and includes a section on the county’s geology. The South West Heritage Trust also holds an extensive collection of fossil and other geological specimens relating to Somerset in its store. 

• Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI) – holds a geological collection with material from the county. In particular, it holds the fossil collection of the early Somerset geologist, Charles Moore (1814-1881), including material from Strawberry Bank Ilminster, where Moore spent the younger part of his life. Since 2010 BRLSI has been facilitating a project called the Jurassic Ecosystem of Strawberry Bank Ilminster (JESBI) which has been conserving and researching these fossils. There is information on the JESBI project (and its other exhibitions, events and talks) on its web site.

• Bristol Museum and Art Gallery – holds material relevant to Somerset’s geology. It has the largest ‘permanent’ geology displays in the South West. 

• Alfred Gillett (AG) Trust – is developing plans for a new museum at Street, aimed at opening in 2025 to mark the bicentenary of Clarks shoe business. Phase 2 will include updated display for its fossil collection, which includes ichthyosaurs and other fossils from quarries in the Street area gathered by Alfred Gillet (1814-1904). Consultants have already been advising on conservation of the fossil collection. Our autumn SGG meeting in 2023 was kindly hosted by the Trust, including a discussion contributing to the consultations on the plans to house its collections. The points made were summarized in the SGG Spring 2024 Update and may be useful to others involved in museum displays (see also under Geo-interpretation).

Other more local museums with geological material in Somerset include, for example: Castle Cary Museum, Frome Museum, Minehead Museum, Watchet Museum , Wells and Mendip Museum; and beyond Somerset: Radstock Museum in Bath and North East Somerset (BANES), and Weston Museum in North Somerset.

Somerset overall

When thinking about exploring in the field there are several popular-interest books, field guides and leaflets available. For Somerset overall, our SGG Somerset Good Rocks Guide (see link below) may still provide some useful ideas for places to visit, although it dates from 2004, and Peter Hardy’s book also covers the complete county:

• Prudden, H. 2004. Somerset Geology – A Good Rocks Guide (Somerset Geology Group) – is a 39-page guide to geological localities of interest within Somerset, compiled by the late Hugh Prudden, former secretary of the Somerset Geology Group. He compiled this guide as a start point for exploring the county’s geology, with the majority of the locations mentioned either Sites of Special Scientific Interest or Local Geology Sites. Please note that it dates from 2004, so that some of the access information may now be out of date.  
• Hardy, P. 1999. The Geology of Somerset. Cromwell Press –  is a book still in publication with chapters on all the main areas of Somerset. Peter Hardy has lived in Somerset since 1971, for seven years in Taunton, twenty in Bath and more recently close to the Mendip Hills. He has devoted his professional life to teaching adults, including being employed by Bristol University for many years. 

Another good starting point is the British Geological Survey’s Geology of Britain viewer, which can be downloaded as an app to a mobile device. See our Geo-research page for further detail and information on other BGS resources. 

See the area headings below for other popular-interest books, guides and leaflets.

Exmoor & Quantocks

This section covers popular-interest books, guides and leaflets for Exmoor, the Brendon and Quantock Hills and the adjacent west Somerset coast. See also our Exmoor and Quantock areas LGS Review reports.

• Edwards, R.A. 2000. Exmoor Geology: Exploring the Landscapes, Rocks and Mines of the National Park. Halsgrove – is a book introducing the rocks and landscapes of Exmoor, written by a former BGS geologist to be accessible to the non-specialist and with suggested walks and places to visit.

• Exmoor National Park Authority  – has a web-page on geology. There are also educational resources available on its Learning pages, for example on the geomorphology of Porlock beach, while its Pinkery Centre for Outdoor Learning is a location with good potential for nearby geological and geomorphological field studies. 

• Green, D. 2022. The Quantocks and North Somerset Coast – Landscape and Geology. Crowood Press – is a book, with maps, cross-sections, photos and diagrams, which explains the geology of areas of the Brendon and Quantock Hills and adjacent areas of the west Somerset coast. It also covers the Taunton and Bridgwater areas and the Blackdown Hills escarpment.

• Prudden, H.C. 2001. Geology and Landscape of Taunton Deane: Taunton Deane Borough Council – see under Taunton area below for full detail – some chapters cover, for example, locations in the Brendon and Quantock Hills and locations with ‘Culm Measures’ Carboniferous strata.

• Keene, P. and Elsom, D. 1990. Lyn in Flood, Watersmeet to Lynmouth – Thematic trails, booklet.

• Keene, P. and Pearce, B. 1993. Valley of Rocks, Lynton – Thematic trails, booklet.

• Keene, P. 1996. Classic landforms of the North Devon coast. Geographical Association, republished by Thematic trails in 2005 – includes a chapter on Exmoor: Valley of Rocks.  

• Robinson, E. 2006. The Geology of Watchet and its Neighbourhood, Somerset. Geologists Association, Field Guide 66  – a short guide, very suitable for beginners, to the Devonian, New Red Sandstone and Jurassic (Lias) rocks in the vicinity of Watchet. Relatively gentle walks along the foreshore and inland to view exposures, plus the added bonus of examining the usage of local and imported rocks for walls, housing and bridges.

• Case, D. J. 2013: The Coast of the Bristol Region: Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology, Geologists’ Association, Field Guide No 71 – Excursion No 5 covers coastal change and the geomorphology of the Lilstock to Stert coastline, mostly within the Bridgwater Bay National Nature Reserve (see also under Mendip area).

• Robinson, E. 2013. Minehead’s Building Stones. A Geological Town Centre Walk – booklet published by Minehead Museum.

• Savage, R.J.G. 1977. Geological Excursions in the Bristol District – not now in print, but Chapter 2 by D. L. Dineley covered the Quantock and Brendon Hills. A scanned copy can be found via Graeme Churchard’s “Geology in the West Country” blog.

Mendips

This section covers popular-interest books, guides and leaflets for the parts of the Mendips Hills within Somerset, including the adjacent Somerset Levels. See also our Mendips area LGS Review report (NB This covers the part of the Mendip Hills that come within Somerset per se (as opposed to those parts that lie within Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) and/or North Somerset). 

A good first step to exploring the geology is to look out for events, including field visits, organized as part of the Mendip Rocks Festival; and the learning opportunities that Somerset Earth Sciences Centre (SESC) offers. See our  Geo-activities page for both. We suggest contacting SESC for its potential to advise, arrange and host visits.

See “Somerset overall” above for The Good Rocks Guide, which mentions several sites in and around the Mendips and Peter Hardy’s book. 

• The Mendip Hills National Landscapes web site may also have some useful starter information.

• Brunning, R.A. 2013. The Lost Islands of Somerset. Somerset Heritage Service. Book – the focus is on archaeology, but a chapter explains the different sea levels occurring in Quaternary times.

• Burr, P: 2015: Mines and Minerals of the Mendip Hills, Vols 1 and 2, Mendip Cave Registry and Archive – two classic volumes covering these aspects of the interest.

• Case, D. J., 2013. The Coast of the Bristol Region: Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology, Geologists Association, Field Guide No 71 – includes excursions covering the Somerset Coast. Excursion 3, for example, covers Middle Hope and Sand Bay, while Excursion 4 covers Burnham-on-Sea to Brean Down.

• Farrant, A, 2008: A walker’s guide to the geology and landscape of western Mendip and A walker’s guide to the geology and landscape of eastern Mendip, Earthwise Guides published by the British Geological Survey – books with folded maps that provide an informed and comprehensive introduction to the Mendips.

• Donovan, D and Prudden, H, 2015 an introduction to the geology of the building stones in Orbach, J. 2015. The Buildings of England. Somerset: South and West, Pevsner Architectural Guide – see our Geo-conservation page under Building Stones, but we repeat it here as it is one of Professor Desmond Donovan’s (1921-2019) later publications and of more popular-interest. Desmond lived in Wells in retirement, was the first chairman of our Somerset Geology Group and is the author of a considerable number of research papers on Mendip geology (see Bibliography under our Geo-research page).

• Duff, K.L, McKirdy, A.P and Harley, M.J. 1985. New Sites for Old: Student’s Guide to the Geology of the East Mendips. Nature Conservancy Council – no longer in print. NB Our LGS review indicated that exposure and access is no longer available for several sites mentioned.

• Hunt, C.O. & Haslett, S.K.(Eds) 2006. Quaternary of Somerset Field Guide for the 2006 annual meeting of the Quaternary Research Association – part of the International Union for Quaternary Research ‘Short term sea-level change and coastal vulnerability’ project. NB Although this is  a field guide it consists of technical papers covering, for example, Brean Down, Middle Hope and other sites in the Mendips and Somerset Levels.

• Lavis, S. (Editor) 2024. Geology of the Bristol Region. Geologists’ Association Guide no 78 – is an excellent recent addition to the GA Guides series which includes important locations in the wider Mendips and also the coast around Weston-S-Mare and Portishead.

• Mendip Cave Registry – gives detailed information on the many caves and old mines that can be found in the area. 

• Stagg, K., Stonebridge, E., Hutchinson, D.R., Corner, T. and Barnett, R 2018: Geological sites of the Bristol Region. Bristol, England. Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre – a book covering sites in the parts of the Mendip Hills that lie beyond Somerset, in BANES and North Somerset.

• Stanton, W.I. 1993. Somerset’s caves and swallets. Nature in Somerset. Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation. Pages 8-21. and the earlier Barrington, N and Stanton, W 1977: Mendip: the complete caves and a view of the hills. Cheddar Valley Books – these are the main popular-interest publications by William (Willie) Stanton (1930 – 2010), a former member and chairman of our Somerset Geology Group. Papers written by him are listed in our Bibliography (see under Geo-research) and illustrate his in-depth knowledge of the Mendips and its hydrogeology.  

South Somerset

This section covers popular-interest books, guides and leaflets for the area formerly covered by South Somerset District Council, but see the Taunton area for the Blackdown Hills. See also our South Somerset area LGS Review report.

The geological highlight is Ham Hill Country Park, where golden-coloured Ham Hill Limestone – a formation unique to the Ham Hill area – of Lower Jurassic age can be seen exposed in old quarry faces. For fuller information on Ham Hill Country Park see our Geo-activities page and see below for the geology trail. 

See also BRLSI, above under Museums, for information on fossil material from the Ilminster area, but please note that there are no exposures of these old quarry faces remaining. The  scientific excavation in recent years to locate the original, very localized, horizon was also on privately-owned land.

• Two chapters of Peter Hardy’s book cover parts of southern Somerset (see above under Somerset overall), while Hugh Prudden’s Somerset Good Rocks Guide includes Ham Hill Country Park (No 21), Corton Denham (No 10, 10 km north of Yeovil) and No 45 Yeovil.

• South Somerset D C, 2017. Ham Hill Geology Trail (Friends of Ham Hill) – is a leaflet to accompany a marked trail commemorating the late Hugh Prudden and his commitment to the geological conservation and teaching value of Ham Hill (Hugh lived nearby in Montacute and was secretary of the Somerset Geology Group for many years). It is at an introductory level to provide interest for all, with two parts to the route: one which is wheel-chair accessible. It can also be downloaded as a pdf from the Country Park web site.  

• Prudden, H C, c. 2007. A Geological Guide to Ham Hill Country Park  (Open University Geological Association) – a 17-page document that provides more detail, including a bibliography. 

• Prudden, H.C. 2005. Geology and landscape in and around Yeovil. South Somerset District Council – is a 15-page booklet, covering a building-stone town trail in Yeovil and the geology of the nearby Yeovil Country Park. (It updates the earlier Prudden, H.C. 1993. Geological Trails in Yeovil).

• Hunt, C.O. & Haslett, S.K.(Eds) 2006. Quaternary of Somerset Field Guide for the 2006 annual meeting of the Quaternary Research Association (see under Mendip area) – includes technical papers covering some sites in the Langport area, mostly privately owned.

• Snowball, S and Christopher, P. 2022. A Guide to the Fossils of the Beacon Limestone Formation in South Somerset – note that most fossil locations are not in situ and are on private land.

Otherwise, there is surprisingly little in the way of published excursions for the southern part of Somerset, despite many interesting aspects to its geology. Some guides and leaflets on Dorset’s geology (for example: Cope, J C W, 2016. The Geology of the Dorset Coast, Geologists’ Association Guide no 22 and material published by DIGS, our equivalent group in Dorset) may provide some wider context, in tandem with the BGS map viewer. 

Taunton area

This section covers popular-interest books, guides and leaflets for the area around Taunton, including the adjacent Blackdown Hills escarpment. See also our Taunton area LGS Review report.  

This area includes a range of different Permo-Triassic formations, including the northern part of the ‘Budleigh Pebble Bed’, plus the Cretaceous strata of the Blackdown Hills escarpment. 

• Prudden, H.C. 2001. Geology and Landscape of Taunton Deane: A Geological Exploration of south west Somerset. Taunton Deane Borough Council – a book covering the geological interest, with chapters on different localities in this part of Somerset. Chapter 12 Taunton Rocks Trail covers the different building stones to be found in a walk around Taunton, while chapters for some other locations refer to walks leaflets published previously by the former Taunton Deane Borough Council.

• Green, D. 2022. The Quantocks and North Somerset Coast – Landscape and Geology. Crowood Press (see under Exmoor and Quantocks for fuller entry) – also covers the Taunton and Bridgwater areas and the Blackdown Hills escarpment.

• Edwards R A and Gallois R W, 2004. Geology of the Sidmouth District, Explanatory guide to British Geological Survey map sheets 326 and 340 – a shorter description of the strata than the usual fuller BGS Memoirs accompanying map sheets. It describes the strata on the East Devon coast and adjacent areas, providing wider context for understanding the broadly similar geology of the Blackdown Hills.

Page last revised April 2025.